This release provides environmental, economic and social information for the 5 Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions that comprise the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments. The methodologies and practices used in this release will be reviewed and enhanced to produce future land accounts which will cover each State and Territory as well as specific environmental regions. For further information on environmental-economic accounting please refer to the ABS Information Paper: Towards an Integrated Environmental-Economic Account for Australia, 2010 (cat. no 4655.0.55.001).

The data are presented by way of an experimental Land Account. As mentioned in the preface this experimental Land Account is the forerunner to a planned series of land accounts and is an integral part of a full set of integrated environmental-economic accounts currently being developed by the ABS. It aims to provide statistics to inform decision-making, research and discussion about the GBR region and land accounts within government and in the wider community.

The Land Account is part of a set of integrated environmental-economic accounts currently being developed by the ABS. Environmental-economic accounting is a method of integrating environmental data with economic and social data. The United Nations Statistics Division is leading the development of an environmental-economic accounting framework, the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA). Where possible, this release has been produced in accordance with the SEEA and has followed previous ABS environmental-economic accounting publications utilising this system - Energy Account, Australia, 2006-07 (cat. no. 4604.0) and Water Account, Australia, 2008-09 (cat. no. 4610.0). In addition, land, timber and sub-soil assets are included on the national balance sheet contained in the Australian System of National Accounts, 2009-10 (cat. no. 5204.0).

This publication builds on the December 2009 release, Land Management Practices in the Great Barrier Reef Catchments, Final, 2008-09 (cat. no. 4619.0), which used 'land' as the framework for the statistical collection rather than the traditional business based framework. Using 'land' as the statistical unit enables data to be collected and published at finer levels of geography.

No new statistical collections were conducted to provide data for this release. It was compiled from existing data sources from Commonwealth and state government agencies.